


Stand Tall, Swallow Hard

by tempertantrum (bittercritic)



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, M/M, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-04 07:41:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3002933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittercritic/pseuds/tempertantrum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stand Tall, Swallow Hard

**Author's Note:**

> Definitely a strong content warning for drug use/abuse and some ableist language! Fun fact: this was typed in the same document that I put my grocery list in. It's also the first thing I've written in about a year, so throw some criticism my way if you're so inclined. Some notes about the drugs here are at the end.

The day after the bonfire, they all go to work like usual. There’s work to be done after all—it doesn’t stop just because they’ve killed a man, or just because their boss’s husband is missing. And besides that, it can never look like last night was anything more than an undergrad party that they all got caught up in. So if Connor’s red around the eyes, or Laurel can’t stop yawning, then it’s fine—it’s so easy to get caught up in those parties, after all.

They’ve got the goddamn selfies to prove it. Their alibis, on each of their cell phones, the bonfire burning brightly in the background and highlighting a thousand bodies. Only one of which is dead.

So they go into work. At the end of the day, they go home.

Connor climbs into his car and grips the steering wheel, takes a few deep breaths before he twists the key and still somehow jumps when the engine starts. He’s feeling twitchy still—just because he has ice in his veins doesn’t mean that he’s fearless. He’s not stupid. Even if the act itself is done, the consequences are still hanging over his head like the sword of Damocles. Connor doesn’t go straight home after work, but instead to the friend of a friend of a friend’s house. It’s all about degrees of separation.

He has twenty bucks in his wallet, ostensibly for emergencies. He spends less than ten minute standing in a distant acquaintance’s doorway, and walks off with a gram of weed and two pretty little bars of Xanax. It’s seven bucks each pill, which is more than he’d normally bother to pay, but—but. Two milligrams each. It’s going to be worth it when he doesn’t have to call around and ask who’s selling it the cheapest.

Appearances are fucking everything, after all. It’s fine if everyone thinks he’s popping a little Adderall every now and again to get his (difficult, stressful) law work done. It goes nicely with the image he’s cultivating for himself—a little aloof, a little slutty, entirely willing to do whatever it takes. He’s got ice in his veins, so it’s okay if he pops a pill every now and again with a sly wink to anyone who’s watching. But it’s a completely different animal if people know he’s taking benzos now.

Connor goes the fuck home, a baggie and two pills nestled away in the pocket of his coat. He carefully doesn’t consider what he probably should be doing, and would be doing if he wasn’t such a giant piece of excrement. He should go talk to Oliver. If he was even a kind of decent person, he’d make up some bullshit story about how he’s talking to a counselor, how he’s going to get help, how he doesn’t want this to ruin his life.

But in some ways, it’s too damn close to the truth. And anyway, he likes Oliver. Oliver doesn’t deserve to be lied to, and he shouldn’t have to watch when Connor inevitably fucks up. And he shouldn’t have to be around when someone finally finds out, and when this secret, hidden thing becomes what ruins his life. And besides all that, Oliver might forgive him if he says he wants to do better. And Connor doesn’t need or want forgiveness.

*

He gets home and brushes his teeth twice, then digs through the cardboard box in the back of his closer until he finds his pipe. It’s pretty small, which is fine because he didn’t buy so much weed that he needs a fucking bong or whatever. Though now that he’s considered it, smoking out of a bong or a nice water pipe sounds a hell of a lot better than this.

Connor’s not about to go out and buy more drug paraphernalia than he already has, though, so he dismisses the idea and flops down on his futon.

Packing a bowl is like riding a bicycle. Lighting it is a little harder, and Connor’s immediately thrown back to high school, remembering how he’d sit on his friends’ beds and smoke their weed, burning his fingers all the time. He does catch a little bit of the flame on his thumb, but then it’s easy to get the right angle, and then—he’s sucking in like he’s giving the best damn blow job anyone’s ever received, holding the smoke in his lungs for a count of five, then exhaling.

Just like riding a bike.

*

In the morning, he washes his face and brushes his teeth. Gargles some mouthwash because his breath still tastes like smoke. Slaps on sunscreen, combs gel through his hair until it looks as good as it would any other day. Washes his hands. Puts in his contacts, then a drop of Visine in each eye. Inspects himself, then goes.

He has a prescription for Prozac, a leftover from his undergrad doctor back in Chicago. The prescription is still in his file somewhere, and he still has refills. For his _depression_.

Connor has never believed that someone can overcome all their mental health problems if they just _pull themselves up by their bootstraps_ and _put their mind to it_ and _suck it up_ , the way his dad would always spit when his mom brought him home from counseling. It's the twenty-fucking-first century, he understands that depression is a chemical imbalance and that all the trying in the world can't make an anxious kid stop having panic attacks. He understands that, even if other people never quite do.

He likes to think he never internalized it, the things his dad said about _hard work_ and  _teenage angst_. He likes to think that nothing his father ever said to him had any impact. But the fact remains that he hasn’t touched his Prozac prescription in months, the bottle rattling ominously every time he shuts his medicine cabinet. In a moment of clarity as he drives toward the Middleton campus, he thinks that maybe it’s time to revisit it.

*

You don’t get high on Prozac because it’s an antidepressant. It deals with the long term, and does something Connor doesn’t understand (though Michaela probably would) to change all the little quirks in a person’s brain chemistry until they do just the right things.

Connor starts taking his Prozac again.

He drops by his usual supplier for a new round of Adderall, his old bottle now resting in the cardboard box where he found his pipe. The bottle had been in his car the night of the bonfire, and now he finds that he can’t even look at it.

When Connor gets home, he dumps the contents of a bottle of Advil into a plastic baggie, then dumps all his Adderall into the Advil bottle and drops it into his school bag. He doesn’t touch it for a while.

*

The Xanax bars are still floating somewhere at the bottom of the tray he uses to dump his keys and cell phone when he walks in the door. Fucking ridiculous. He fishes them out of the bottom and wipes them off on the sleeve of his shirt.

A quick round of Googling suggests that he would probably do fine with just half a bar, maybe a little more, but he can feel how jittery he is. It’s a fucking anxiety medication, isn’t it? Shouldn’t it just wipe all his worries away? Or at least make him incapable of notice them, of reacting to them physically. It’s been a week of jumping at small noises, a week of bouncing legs and tapping fingers and the constant, lingering feeling that something terrible is about to happen.

He takes both bars and lays down on his futon. His laptop is set up on the table in front of it, and he idly opens Netflix to watch something. Breaking Bad maybe, that would be really fucking appropriate.

Connor ends up watching nothing. His eyes glass over and he stares at the dark screen until he falls asleep, still flying.

*

“Do you think Connor’s alright?” It’s Michaela, maybe unsurprisingly. They’re such intense competitors that it’s easy to recognize when something isn’t right. “Any other time, I’d be exploiting any show of weakness, but—“

“—but what?” Laurel asks. “It’s different given the circumstances?”

“Laurel’s right,” Wes offers. “We can’t start acting like something happened.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Michaela insists. “Bonfire night is always so busy that it could have been anything. I just want to know, seriously—do you think he looks okay?”

They all hesitate. It’s getting late now, and they’re all that remains of what was originally a Keating Five study group. There are private study rooms for the law students, and being heard isn’t the biggest concern here. Finally, Wes: “He looks tired, I guess. But I think he’s allowed given everything.”

“I—don’t know,” Laurel says, halting. “I mean, we don’t know him very well. He does keep his cards pretty close to the chest.”

“That’s true. Michaela, what makes you think he isn’t okay?”

“Well, I don’t know if he’s having trouble dealing with—all of that. But he always looks out of it, don’t you think?”

“Maybe a little, now that you mention it,” Laurel agrees, her brow wrinkling. “But I don’t think it’s so out of the ordinary. There are other stresses right now.”

“Yeah,” Wes adds. “Everyone probably looks a little out of it if we’re comparing them to the beginning of the semester.”

“Anyway, why do you care, Michaela? Aren’t you two vying for the top of the class? You ought to be happy.”

“Look, top of the class doesn’t matter if we’re all in jail because he couldn’t keep a straight face,” she hisses. Then immediately sits up, arranges her posture and study area. Focuses back on her case book. “Whatever. I just thought I’d ask.”

“She has a point, though,” Laurel says quietly to Wes. “Maybe we should keep an eye on him?”

“I think it’s something we should all agree to,” Michaela says, prim. They agree in quiet tones, then shift back to notes and case books and their E&E books.

*

Study groups are hell. Final exams are hell. Undergraduates clogging up libraries and cafes are hell.

Study groups in particular, though—Connor gets that you retain 90% of what you teach, and that a group of students with different knowledge bases can help each other learn the material better, whatever. It’s fine, seriously. But stuck in a tiny, bright white room with fluorescent lightbulbs and the prying eyes of Miss Priss, fucking Asher Millstone and Waitlist and Laurel—that’s a special kind of hell.

Probably the kind reserved for murderers. Maybe it’s time to reread _The Inferno_.

He gets home and immediately turns his cell phone completely off, leaving it on the rickety table in what passes for the entryway of a studio apartment. It removes temptation. As has become his nightly ritual in these past few weeks, Connor packs and smokes one bowl, then two, and takes a couple bars (which are starting to eat into his checking account because he only fucking budgets for the Adderall).

When he has a nice buzz going, he makes himself a Bloody Mary—the drink of alcoholic housewives everywhere—and settles down on the futon with his casebook. His Bloody Mary is, as usual, more vodka than tomato juice and Tabasco. It’s got a nice burn going down, and soon he’s happily crossfaded, disinclined to do anything more than sit on his couch and read the highlighted sections of his casebook. It’s been three weeks since bonfire night, but that doesn’t seem to matter at all.

Being high like this is practically a fucking religious experience. He can feel the weed in the warmth of his chest, and the Xanax in how light he feels. Is this what astronauts are like? He’s smoked enough (and of a high enough quality) that his skin feels like it’s being pricked by thousands and thousands of soft, tiny needles. It feels like his skin is somehow separate from his body, and his head is floating about a foot up from all of that. The pleasant buzz from the vodka keeps him warm, and his extremities hardly even exist.

God, it’s nice. Connor sometimes wonders why he didn’t do this all through undergrad. It isn’t scary or bad or hard, it’s just nice.

*

This makes it sound like Connor is high all the time, like the drugs he’s taking are interfering with everyday life, and they aren’t. It’s not some bullshit about being high functioning, it’s not a fucking addiction. Only half of what he’s taking is even addictive, and he is always in control of himself.

It’s just a method. When he saw that counselor as a teenager, his mom shuffling him back and forth for his appointments, all the guy ever talked about was strategies for “coping” and for “dealing” and for “keeping it in check.” It’s not like panic attacks are a new thing for Connor. He’s _dealt_ with them for years. He’s _coped_ and he’s _kept it in check_. That used to mean breathing exercises and weird mantras like it’s the 1980s and they were having him listen to a fucking subliminal tape. Like if he told himself whatever the fuck enough times, all his problems would go away.

Now coping is a bar in the morning and two at night, his Prozac prescription when he remembers, and a drink or two in the evenings. It’s perfect, really—he’s not taking so much of anything that he’ll overdose, just enough to keep him at a low level of calm and collected all the time. The weed, the alcohol—now that’s recreational, but he ought to get a damn pass. He’s a law student, and he’s going to finish the first semester of his 1L year at the top of his class.

*

Sometimes Connor thinks this is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

He really isn’t an addict, because he’s seen addiction and that isn’t what this is. But he remembers the lie that fell out of his mouth the morning after the bonfire, how ugly and strange it had felt in his mouth. And he remembers Oliver’s shocked face, his concern and indignation at being lied to. Even though the lie Connor told and the lie Oliver noticed were different things. He'd let Oliver think that he'd lies about taking drugs in order to hide a far worse lie. It was better that way, though--Oliver didn't deserve to be made an accessory, he didn't deserve all of Connor's bullshit. At least the drugs weren’t a lie, now. Even if the addiction was. He’s not a fucking addict, he’s not some loser who starts taking too much, too often and crashes too hard. He’s not a fucking idiot.

*

Finals happen, and Connor finds himself dreading How to Get Away With Murder 102.

*

The holidays are more or less irrelevant. Connor’s family is all on the west coast, tucked away in less-than-sunny San Francisco. The tree will be up for Christmas, his parents and his siblings and all his nieces and nephews starting to crowd into their prettily painted Victorian. He calls and tells them that he’s working over the break, and he loves them and he’ll Skype them on Christmas. Merry Christmas, mom, see you soon!

Philadelphia is cold as fuck, and he doesn’t want to drive up his heating bill. He spends most of his break smoking and drinking, a little less of the pills lately. Annalise has cut them loose to winter somewhere else. She’s still formally mourning her husband, and privately he thinks of her like a Victorian widow, mourning for the appropriate amount of time before she stops and returns to normal society.

It makes sense to him, in a way. Annalise is known for keeping her private life private. It would be out of character for her to mourn publicly. And keeping everything private means that she can continue to be a cold-hearted bitch out of sight and away from judgment. He admires that about her.

Christmas morning is icy and gray. The people across the street have strung up lights, and they wake him up with their flashing at five in the morning. That makes it two over on the west coast, so he packs and smokes a couple bowls, then makes coffee. He drips Visine into his eyes even though he’s just wearing his glasses this morning, because the computers at his parents’ house have pretty good screen resolution, and he doesn’t want them to see how dry and red his eyes are.

*

Fucking up was always going to happen, and it happens about two weeks before the term starts. Five weeks after bonfire night.

He’s spoken with Oliver twice since then, once in a series of texts and once to lie and tell Oliver that he’s going home for the holidays, but they’ll get together and talk when he gets back. Every time, it’s an endless stream of “I’m fine” and “it’s just stressful right now” and “everything is okay right now.” Placid words, like you’d use to get someone you don't know through a panic attack. And isn’t that hilarious.

He finally texts Oliver though, because he can feel guilt boiling in his stomach, settling like rancid milk. How fucking funny is that, that he feels guilty about some fucking guy he lied to but not about the man he killed? Helped kill.

_You free right now? Just now back in town._

_Working today, but I can go home early. Are we actually going to talk this time?_

_Yeah. Your place, around 4?_

_See you then._

So he gets ready to go see Oliver. In and out of the shower, hair towel dried and combed into place. Glasses off and contacts in, teeth brushed, stubble shaved down enough to be stylish. He takes his pills. He slides into jeans and a hoodie, tops it with his coat, and heads out.

The thing is, Prozac and Xanax together increase drowsiness tenfold. His morning mix might keep him calm and collected, but it also makes him tired. During school, he’d supplement that with two cups of coffee in the morning and an energy drink around noon, just enough to keep him bright-eyed and awake. Now, getting in his car, he remembers the Adderall in his bag. It should be enough, shouldn’t it? Connor takes one, then starts heading toward Oliver’s apartment.

So really it’s more of a prolonged series of fuck-ups.

*

He gets there before Oliver does, and leans up against the wall in the hallway. He feels jittery already, but that could be from anything. Foot tapping, hands shaking, knees a little weak. Maybe if he passes out, he can get out of this conversation.

That doesn’t happen, though, and Oliver comes striding down the hallways just a few minutes after Connor arrives. He looks good—navy suit, off the rack. Black oxfords, tie loosened, his laptop bag in his hand. Connor smiles a little just looking at him.

“Hey,” he offers quietly. He knows he probably looks like shit.

“Hi,” Oliver says back. He brushes his hand over Connor’s hip in some semblance of a greeting, then pulls out his keys to open the door. Connor follows him in.

“So how is this going to go?” He asks. Is it an intervention? A chewing out? Does he want to fuck?

“Go?” Oliver asks. “Well, you’re going to sit down and tell me what the hell you meant when you said you had a drug problem.”

“I wouldn’t necessarily classify it as a problem,” Connor hedges. He wishes he’d planned out what he wanted to say beforehand. He should have had a plan.

“You came here and had a panic attack. A pretty bad one, from what I can tell. And then the next morning you tell me—what? That you took a bunch of pills and something you hadn’t tried before. I think that’s a problem.” Oliver had placed his laptop bag carefully on the table in his living room, and shelled off his jacket. It leaves him in a shirt and tie, his face cast with something unpleasant. Connor sits on the couch, sinking back into its overstuffed cushions.

“Okay, fine.” Connor frowns. “I was being an idiot that night, but seriously, Oliver. I’m not an addict. That’s the only time I’ve ever taken more than I can handle.”

“I really don’t believe you,” Oliver shakes his head, and sits down in the chair across from Connor.

“What?” Connor squints, feeling sort of fuzzy. “I don’t…what is there to believe?”

“What the hell is wrong with you? Honestly—I’m kind of curious. Is the self-destructive thing something you do for fun?”

“I’m not—I’m not self-destructive. It’s not…it’s not a problem, Oliver.” He puts his head in his hands. He’s sweating suddenly, feeling disoriented. As a teenager he’d had problems with blood sugar and dehydration—like every time he stood up he’d get dizzy and feel a sudden, plummeting vertigo. Sometimes his vision would go gray like he was about to pass out. That’s what it feels like now.

“I really don’t believe you,” Oliver says. It sounds like he’s calling to him from the other end of a tunnel. “Are you—are you high right now?” Oliver is suddenly in front of him, nudging Connor’s hands away from his face like a parent with a recalcitrant child. Oliver lifts up his chin and looks at his eyes. Connor squints back, his vision a little blurry. It was probably just his contacts.

“Connor?” Oliver’s brow furrows. “Connor, are you okay?”

“What? I’m fine, yeah. What are you…” He trails off, confused now.

“Your pupils are huge. C’mon, stand up.” “What? No—I just need a sec, my blood sugar’s low or something.”

Oliver pushes at his shoulder, trying to get him up. “No, come on. We need to go to the hospital.”

His arms are breaking out in goosebumps even though he feels too hot in his coat and hoodie and tee shirt. He shakes his head, feeling even more disoriented. “No, it’s fine. Just gimme a minute.”

Oliver frowns and loops his arm under Connor’s. “Where are your keys?” He asked, hauling Connor up. The movement makes everything worse. His vision grays over, and he leans heavily on Oliver.

“I—my bag. Are you gonna drive?” He slurs. “Can you drive?”

Something is wrong. What—what does Oliver think he needs a hospital for? He’s a little high, yeah. He doesn’t feel like it’s a normal high, but whatever. It’s probably just drowsiness, the Adderall probably just wasn’t enough to get him all the way awake, maybe. That’s not—it isn’t a hospital thing.

*

Connor passes out in the car, slumped back against the passenger seat. He looks so limp and unmoving that Oliver breaks half a dozen traffic laws to get to Penn Presbyterian, thanking God all the way that the streets weren’t frozen.

*

It’s Serotonin Syndrome, sometimes also known as serotonin toxicity. And it happens when medications interact and cause too much serotonin to build up in the body. It can be caused by certain antidepressants and amphetamines, but also by interactions between drugs. Especially drugs like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and dextroamphetamines.

“It’s a good thing you got him here when you did,” the ER nurse tells Oliver kindly. “Things could have been a lot worse.”

“Yeah,” Oliver murmurs absently.

*

Sometimes serotonin buildup is caused by antidepressants.

*

“Yeah,” Connor murmurs around his oxygen mask. “I started taking an old prescription for Prozac again.”

“It can be dangerous to stop and start medications like that, especially without a doctor to supervise.” This guy is ancient and grandfatherly. In more of a curmudgeonly old man way than a spoil-the-grandkids-rotten kind of way.

“Yeah, I got that,” Connor chokes out, irritated.

*

Oliver drives Connor home in his car. Now that he’s awake, Connor chafes at the idea of someone else driving, but he doesn’t say anything. Neither of them do. Oliver follows him inside. It’s university controlled housing off campus, so his whole apartment would more or less fit into Oliver’s living room. To Oliver, it looks surprisingly bare—especially given what he knows of Connor and Connor’s personality. There are books on the table and on the desk, a coffee maker on the kitchen counter, a blanket over the futon. Hardly anything else.

Connor sits heavily on the futon, leaning his head back. Oliver stays standing. Asks, quietly, “Antidepressants?”

Connor’s head lulls to the side and he opens his eyes a crack. Gets up, goes to the bathroom. Closes the door, ignoring Oliver for the moment. Inside, he grips the edge of the sink tightly, breathing heavily. It might not be an issue, but it isn’t irrelevant. He takes out his contacts, drips Visine in each eye. Takes out the bottles in the cupboard—the Xanax, the Prozac, the Valium he picked up recently. He lays them out on the counter.

When he leaves the bathroom, Oliver is still there. He looks out of place, his face lined with concern and eyes shadowed with fatigue. “Connor—“

“Everything is on the bathroom counter. You can flush it.”

Oliver takes in Connor’s appearance, how tired he is, how his shoulders slump and his hair hangs messy in his face. When Connor sits back down on the futon, Oliver heads into the tiny bathroom and closes the door. Connor, outside, can hear the steady plop of pills and the flush of the toilet.

*

Oliver sits next to him on the futon when he comes back out. They’ll have to talk about it at some point. Really talk about it. But for the moment, Connor is content to rest his head against Oliver’s shoulder in a kind of quiet companionship he rarely offers or accepts. At least now he knows he didn’t lie to Oliver, not really.

*

And it occurs to him, quietly, that his Adderall is still in an Advil bottle at the bottom of his school bag.

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like the pacing for this is pretty off, but I don't know how to fiddle with it anymore. Still trying to get back in the saddle of fic writing, so to speak! I hope you all enjoyed it, though.
> 
> A bar of Xanax is usually 2 mg. It's an anti-anxiety medication. Prozac is an antidepressant, but it's also used to treat some other issues like OCD and panic disorders. Adderall is an amphetamine used mainly to treat ADHD and narcolepsy. Xanax and Adderall are often taken recreationally, but SSRIs like Prozac aren't.
> 
> Xanax and Prozac don't interact except to increase drowsiness. Xanax and Adderall don't have any interactions that I can see. Adderall and Prozac can cause serotonin syndrome, though! In more severe cases, a patient can have seizures and fall into a coma. It can be fatal.
> 
> And, for the record, my medical knowledge is limited to what I can google. Any inaccuracies are my fault.


End file.
